Pictures

• Day 8: Paragliding
• Day 8: Grindelwald

Goal: Check out the stars tonight. Forgot to do that in other countries.

The Jungfrau region we’re currently at is a center for extreme sports.  Chuck and I had talked about skydiving, but decided to do some paragliding instead. It wasn’t as expensive, and we’d get to take some awesome aerial photos. So yesterday we made reservations for paragliding at 10:00am. This morning, after a good breakfast, we made our way to First Bahnhof where we were to meet the pilots we’d be paragliding with. The guy I rode with was named Peter.

We took a 25 or so minute ride up to the top of the First gondola and had a short hike to the takeoff area. Chuck and I looked at the scenery (which was spectacular from  that height) while the pilots took to getting all the gear ready. They then hooked us up with the harness (which was also a seat) and we took off! I took video of the takeoff, flying around in the air, and then the landing. I’ll try to upload them soon.  I also took pictures while in the air, and those you can see from the links above.

We had awesome weather, good visibility and great updrafts to help keep us aloft. We got to sail over quite a bit of Grindelwald. We did come pretty close to a trail in one point, because we were swooping past some hikers! Peter even did some cool maneuvers right before we landed, including one where we were pulling some Gs while spiraling around such that we were actually above the wing! Way better than a roller coaster! It’s sad that all great things have to come to and end, but it really was specatular up there! I wonder if they do frequent flier discounts

After that we came back to our lodge and read, napped and just generally relaxed. I did develop a blister on one of my left foot’s toes yesterday, but it feels pretty good right now. We ended up napping for quite a while. It was a good day to be lazy because some storms rolled in and there were intermittent showers. It brought the lovely smell of rain, but probably would have ruined our cameras had we been out in it.  Guess things worked out! Besides napping I uploaded some photos and read more “I, Robot”.

After the nap, we went to a restaurant where we had some good italian pizza and awesome desert! I was even able to communicate with the waiter a bit in German. It felt good. I really want to get back into speaking German, I’ve decided! Right now we’re sitting in the main lodge because there is, of course, someone sleeping in our room. We’re really tired of people going to bed so freaking early in every place we stay! We were hoping to have the place to ourselves tonight, but alas that will not happen.

For some reason, Grindelwald is a huge tourist area for Japanese. There are even signs all over the town which have Japanese translations. We haven’t seen that before. We’ll have to see if it’s like that in Interlaken as well, when we go there tomorrow.  I wonder what brings them to this very particular, small area of Switzerland.

Soon as I post this Chuck and I are off to check out the stars outside! There shouldn’t be too much cloud cover. Let’s hope for a great view!